


turned on you like mother nature

by jamesstruttingpotter



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M, because these two idiots have managed it, is it possible to have hate sex with your spouse whom you love deeply
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:55:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28103559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamesstruttingpotter/pseuds/jamesstruttingpotter
Summary: “Perhaps you’re thinking too much,” he says. It’s languid, seemingly careless—but she’s known him for long enough to hear the serrated edge underneath. It takes her a half-second longer to recognize it as desire, made jagged by the strain of fighting with her. His lips brush against her bare skin. “Aren’t you tired of thinking so much, Jude?”
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 5
Kudos: 154





	turned on you like mother nature

**Author's Note:**

> I mean, what can I say, other than that I'm sorry? Holly Black had to have known this pairing was basically hate sex fanfiction catnip, right? Like, she definitely knew what she was doing.

Jude returns to their chambers with rage in her chest. Nightfell hangs heavy and tempting at her hip; she fights the urge to draw it against the stout wood posts of their bedframe. She settles for flinging it, still in its scabbard, on the low couch before the roaring fire. 

Her head hurts. She’s abruptly aware of how gold tugs at her earlobes, sits weighty against her brow and wrists. She stalks over to her vanity to remove her earrings and bracelets and nearly throws her crown back onto its specially-made plinth, carved from dark wood to better draw out the gemstones’ shine. She unclasps her cloak and lets it lie where it falls at her feet.

“It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen you throw a fit of pique,” says his voice from behind her, silky-smooth and amused.

She still has a knife strapped to her calf. She briefly considers throwing it. Aimed to miss, of course, but close enough to scare him. “Get out,” she says instead.

Cardan instead draws close enough to enter her peripheral vision. “Out of my own bedchamber?”

“I’m sure you can find someone else’s for the night.”

This straightens the smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t,” he says, and that fans her flames higher. Perversely, it feels like relief.

“Don’t? Is that an order? I fail to see why I should listen to your commands when you insist on ignoring mine.”

“Perhaps if you weren’t _commanding_ , I would be more inclined to consider your advice.”

She whirls around to face him properly. “I’m making decisions regarding _your_ protection based on the intelligence _my_ spies have gathered for me. You’re refusing to listen to those decisions based on nothing but your sense of pride, knowing full well the journey to the Court of Termites is treacherous at best!”

His eyes flash. “I will not be hounded into taking overly cautious measures that would do nothing more than make me look like a coward. We’ve made the journey before with fewer than ten guards, and taking more than that number when fewer people are traveling is ridiculous.”

“I was _with_ you those other times,” she snaps, voice rising. “I can’t protect you while I’m stuck here this time!”

“And I’m helpless without you, am I?”

“You might as well be.” She turns back to her vanity. She can see his jaw working in the reflection of her mirror. _Good_ , she thinks, vicious. He had been far too complacent while discussing the matter with the Living Council.

She reaches behind her to unlace her dress. Taryn had designed this one a few months ago, making sure to emphasize the tight corset, worn over the bodice and fluting down to full skirts. “You’re a queen, which means you must look regal,” her twin had said, before a conspiratorial look had crossed her face. Jude had had a quick flash of what she herself must look like whilst in her element. “But you’re a young queen, which means you have the room to look tempting, as well.”

Her shoulders are bare. With her cloak on the floor and the fire across the room, a chill threatens to work down her spine. She wants to change into her nightclothes and burrow into bed, almost as badly as she wants to keep fighting her husband.

The corset lacing won’t unknot. She grits her teeth against a fresh wave of frustration before she feels long fingers meet her own. Cardan’s warmth presses against her back for a moment before he takes over the task. His reflected expression is still stormy. 

What to do about his security? Jude understands his reluctance, can even empathize with his point of view to some extent, but she’s loath to chance his safety on grandstanding. Besides, Roiben is likely to be unimpressed by whatever message a dearth of guards would send. The journey to the Court of Termites is not particularly long, but does involve a winding forest trail, one notable for its daring, bloodthirsty robbers. Even if no robber were brave enough to take on the High King, many an assassination has been staged in those woods. Jude is not foolish enough to believe they have no enemies, even after five years on the throne. Half a decade is nothing but a blink to faerie eyes.

“You’re tense,” says Cardan, voice quiet in her ear, and she startles. 

“You’ve given me much to think about, my King,” she replies, acid.

Far from being baited, his shoulders relax. “I don’t think that’s it,” he says, and tugs. Her corset loosens immediately. She takes a full breath for the first time in hours. She makes to remove her dress but his hands are on her hips suddenly, vise-like. “I think your thoughts have weighed heavy for weeks, long before I proposed traveling with few in my company.”

She stiffens further. He’s not wrong, and she little appreciates the reminder. The Roach has told her he worries over the latest recruits, who are perhaps less capable than they’d hoped to give them credit for. She’s been engaged in a war of civility with Asha, who has begun her latest bid to amass greater power under her son’s nose, if only to utilize it for more debauched revels. Most concerning, her Court of Shadows has been busy with whispers about Randalin, ones she has yet to make head or tails of. This is on top of her regular duties as Queen and seneschal, the weight of which has not gotten easier with time. Most nights she doesn’t get into bed until the sun’s halfway up the sky, doesn’t see Cardan awake unless it’s out the corner of her eyes as they sit in their thrones. She’s suddenly aware of the fact that his grip on the slope of her hipbones is the first time he’s touched her in recent memory.

“I’ve been engaged in running our kingdom,” she says finally. His fingers tug her closer. The rich fabric of her dress is crushed between her back and his front. “I know you have been, too,” she adds, a concession she would not have made six years ago.

He hums. “And yet, I’ve found the time to sleep and eat.”

Her hackles rise again. “Perhaps your problems are not as difficult as mine, then,” she snaps, and his hold tightens in warning, even as he rests his chin against the curve where her neck meets her shoulders. 

“Perhaps you’re thinking too much,” he says. It’s languid, seemingly careless—but she’s known him for long enough to hear the serrated edge underneath. It takes her a half-second longer to recognize it as desire, made jagged by the strain of fighting with her. His lips brush against her bare skin. “Aren’t you tired of thinking so much, Jude?”

She shivers, not ready to lay down arms just yet. “One of us has to,” she says, and is rewarded with teeth against her pulse point.

Her legs feel unsteady. “Do you think you can bear to leave one hour of thinking in my hands?” he asks, and she hates how easily sarcasm colors his tone, even as she thrills at how desire bleeds through it.

“An entire hour?” she says. It’s only half sarcastic. The moon has only just begun to set, meaning there’s still time left to try to sort out her affairs. She was planning on meeting with some of the more sympathetic courtiers to glean the latest information on Court sentiment, on practicing her swordwork, on plotting the latest Hill defense formations to send to Grima Mog. “I’m not sure I can extend you my trust for a whole sixty minutes.”

“Try,” he orders, and she feels weightless against the heady sensation of his lips mouthing against her neck. Then he’s gone, back to her as he tosses his coat onto their bed. “Clothes off,” he says, barely sparing her a glance.

She resists for another moment before acquiescing. The dress tumbles off her in luscious, silken waves, leaving her bare save her underwear and her knife. Amusement pulls at his mouth as he takes in the latter. “And your weapons,” he says, “unless you plan on holding me hostage. Again, I might add.”

“I should throw it at you instead,” she mutters. But for now, she unbuckles the sheath from her calf and lays it aside before meeting his gaze again. “Thirty minutes,” she warns.

He shakes his head. He looks the picture of ease, familiar insolence carved into the lines of his face as he leans against their bedpost. “We’ll start with an hour. Clothes off, I said.”

“Make me,” she replies, and it’s like watching a flame meet parchment, the way desire and feral satisfaction eat away at his expression.

“Come here,” he says, and she does. The stone floor is cold beneath her bare feet. Her breasts feel heavy, nipples pebbling already in the cool air. His hands are hot where he places them at her thighs. “You’re going to continue being difficult, aren’t you?” he muses.

She has a vivid flash of the last time they fucked, how she’d gripped his hair and made him bury his face between her legs until she was sated. The one thing in Elfhame she can always count on is the constant trade of obligations.

He takes his time, slow enough to make her squirm. The clock in the corner of their chambers ticks audibly. His fingers hook around the cheap elastic of her Hanes underwear. When he finally drags the fabric down her hips, a shiver runs down her spine. She makes to hold onto his shoulders and he shakes his head. “You’ll touch me when I tell you to,” he says.

“I’ll touch you when I want to,” she says before she can check herself.

His palm grips the curve of her bare ass, almost hard enough to hurt. “This isn’t a negotiation.”

“Fine,” she says, and shoves him backward. He lands on their mattress with a grunt. She savors the shock in his expression when he looks up at her, a split second before his eyes narrow. He reaches for her, inhumanly fast; it’s her turn to blink in surprise when she finds herself on top of him. She barely has time to register the slippery feel of his velvet doublet against her stomach before he’s flipping them, her wrists pinned on either side of her head by his hands. 

“You’re misunderstanding the point of this exercise,” he says. 

“The point is for you to convince me this is worth an hour of my time,” she replies. Her voice has gone hatefully soft, lust cracking through the edges. Still, she says, “So far, I’m not convinced.”

“You’d rather spend an hour on state business than with your own husband?” He bows his head to kiss her neck, feather-soft and maddening. 

“I’d rather spend an hour fighting Grima Mog again than with you,” she says, and he laughs.

“Oh, I know I’ll never hold a candle to your regard for bloodshed, Jude.” His mouth travels downward to her breasts. She hisses at the feel of his teeth against her nipple and his grip on her wrists tightens in warning. “Stay still.”

“Cardan,” she says. She feels slick between her thighs already. Her mind scrambles for an advantage, any advantage. She runs a leg up to hook around his hips, rolls up to grind against him. His mouth stutters against her skin for a half-second that feels like victory. Then it returns with a vengeance, kisses tinged with just enough pain to make her gasp. She rolls against him again, this time more desperate than calculated. “Cardan,” she says again, “I have people waiting for me.”

“Let them wait,” he says, and beneath the insolence in his tone yawns hunger. She shudders at it, feels her own chasm of desire threaten to swallow her whole. “You’re a queen, Jude. What are they to you?”

She struggles for another minute despite sensing the futility of it. Maybe she’d been doomed since the start. “Take off your own clothes, then,” she says finally, breathless, and he lets her go with a Cheshire cat grin. 

Her fingers go to his pants immediately. She works the fabric down over his hips and knees, nearly making him lose his balance as he frees himself from his doublet. “Eager, are we?” he asks, and she wants to scratch the satisfaction right off his face. As if recognizing the intent in her eyes, he reaches two clever fingers to the apex of her legs. It’s sufficient distraction; she melts back into their mattress, one hand gripping his free one while he works.

She comes pitifully easy. Her consolation prize is the grunt of pain that escapes his lips as her fingers tighten and twist around his own. “Shit,” she says, and looks up at him to see a familiar expression on his face, almost furious in its intensity. It sends white-hot excitement down her spine.

He grabs her thigh to pull her closer before hauling her hips up toward his own. He enters her like this, rhythm punishingly slow, head buried in the space between her neck and shoulder. She loses patience quickly and starts pushing back against him; vindictive pleasure roils through her at the sound he makes. “More,” she demands.

“Not yet,” he says.

“Cardan—”

“Say please.”

She shoves his shoulder; when he looks up, his pupils are blown wide, the only tell he can’t control. “I will _not_ ,” she says. 

He raises an eyebrow before slowing down his pace to agonizing. “I’m not sure you actually want this,” he says. “You did protest quite a bit at the beginning.”

Her pride is worth more than this. She _knows_ her pride is worth more than this. “I’m not protesting _now_ , am I?” she says, trying to keep desperation out of her voice. 

“I think it would make me feel a lot better if you said please, regardless,” he replies. His face is so close to her own. His breath is hot against her jaw. She wants to sink her teeth into the soft skin of his neck, wants to roll them over and tie him up and _take_ what she needs from him. 

Heat builds in her stomach. He slides another inch deeper into her. The friction isn’t nearly enough, does nothing but sharpen the point of her desire. She _hates_ him, hates him so much she feels feverish with it. “Please,” she grits out, and satisfaction spreads heavy and thick over his face.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he says, and before she can start swearing at him, he’s grabbed her thigh and flipped her over. His hips snap into her own, brutal and quick. She can’t stop herself from making the embarrassing noises that spill out of her throat, even as her fingers scrabble for purchase in silk sheets. 

He feels _so_ good, hands on her hips tight enough to bruise. She can feel pleasure stretching thin in her like an elastic band, can see the cliff’s edge right before she tumbles over it.

White noise buzzes in her ears as she comes again, muscles rigid, fingers aching from her tight grip on the sheets. He keeps going, stealing breath from her lungs, until he comes too, face buried in the space between her spine and shoulder blade.

She sinks down as soon as his hold on her relaxes. He does too, body a comforting weight on top of her own. She feels like someone has taken her apart and put her back together again, joints looser, head filled with cotton.

Silence reigns for some indeterminate amount of time. Then, he rolls over to lie next to her, his face smug. “Feeling a little more relaxed, aren’t you?”

She fights the urge to stick her tongue out at him. “You can’t just distract me with sex every time you think I need a break.”  
“Can’t I? I believe they’re called marital duties for a reason. I have a duty to provide for your well-being.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She stretches, languid and deep. “What time is it?”

He frowns. “Are you truly going to leave me here to go meet with _courtiers_?”

She grins at his petulant tone. “I only ask because I believe I was promised an hour.”

It ends up being longer than that. They both find it very difficult to care.

**Author's Note:**

> brb going to church


End file.
